The Guardian has a review of the oddly named Txtr beagle e-reader. See if you can spot the minor snag.

the Berlin-based firm behind it, announced plans to sell the device for just £8 (yes, really) – that’s £61 less than the current entry-level Kindle.

Not sure how they’ll manage that price-point, but OK. This could potentially open ebooks up to loads of people.

Its plastic moulded body feels surprisingly solid in the hand.

So it doesn’t feel awful, despite being really cheap. Sounds good.

The screen is a 5in eight-level greyscale E-Ink display with a resolution of 800 x 600 pixels. That compares with the entry-level Kindle’s 6in 16-level greyscale E-Ink display [with a higher PPI than the Kindle]

This really is sounding too good to be true. Man, I hope this idea doesn’t somehow slam headlong into a wall.

[It’s] more than 20% lighter than the Kindle.

Cheaper. Brighter. Sharper. Blimey.

The beagle offers 4GB of internal sold-state storage.

Like the Kindle!

The Kindle beats the beagle because although both support digital book formats (ePub for the beagle, AZW for the Kindle) and PDF documents, the beagle stores and displays ebooks and PDFs as highly rendered bitmaps – it’s essentially a bitmap viewer.

Like the— Hang on. What?

 the beagle stores and displays ebooks and PDFs as highly rendered bitmaps

I. Um. OK.

Unlike the Kindle […] the beagle doesn’t have a built-in battery. Instead it is powered by two AAA batteries housed along the rear of the device.

*SLAMMING INTO WALL ALERT KLAXON*

The beagle eschews many of the features the Kindle has, such as Wi-Fi and optional 3G, or a wired connection of any kind. But the lack of connectivity options are why txtr costs so little.

No connectivity. So… how do you get books on to the thing? Magic beans? Psychic powers?

every beagle requires the user to have a smartphone, whether an iPhone, Android, or Windows 8 phone. The beagle’s only connection to the outside world (or other devices) is via Bluetooth. Book management, transfer, and even setting the font size is done through the free txtr app on your smartphone. According to the company, this leaves the beagle to do what it does best: displaying words for you to read.

*SLAMMED INTO WALL ALERT KLAXON*

So, someone’s created a device that’s cheap, light and has a great screen, which could be hugely disruptive, but in order to use this cheap, light device, you need to already own an altogether hugely more expensive device. And not only do you need said device to fire over books (in bitmap form, meaning you can’t fit nearly as many on the device as you could if it accepted text documents), but you even need it to change the font size. This is mental.

Still, at least there’s not another catch, right?

The txtr beagle can be offered at such a low price because its cost will be subsidised by mobile carriers. The beagle itself won’t be sold individually; you’ll only be able to get one is by purchasing it when you sign up for a mobile phone contract on specific carriers.

*SLAMMED INTO WALL, REVERSED AND SLAMMED INTO WALL AGAIN KLAXON*

Oh my. This is a patent by Microsoft that enables content distribution regulation by viewing users. What does that mean in plain English? Well, as Kotaku Australia noted:

Basically, when you buy or rent something like a movie, you’ll only be granted a “license” for a certain number of people to watch it. If Kinect detects more people in the room than you had a licence for, it can stop the movie, and even charge you extra.

Just when you thought downloadable media rights restrictions couldn’t get any worse or more stupid, here comes another patent to prove us wrong. Next: a patent that will listen for anyone in the room whistling their favourite pop song and then demand performance royalties or repeatedly punch them in the face with an ‘iFist’.

Microsoft head honcho Steve Ballmer’s recently come in for some flak, due to saying some slightly odd things about the current state of technology. In a video on CNBC, he uttered:

I don’t think anybody has done a product that is the product that I see customers wanting. You can go through the products from all those guys … and none of them has a product that you can really use. Not Apple. Not Google. Not Amazon. Nobody has a product that lets you work and play that can be your tablet and your PC. Not at any price point. (Transcription: AllThingsD.)

Despite Ballmer setting the BWUH? level to 11, I let this slide. On Twitter, I simply pointed out that no-one really admits when their rivals are doing well, as evidenced somewhat by Apple’s oddly defensive ‘attack’ on the Nexus tablet during its recent keynote. But a Wall Street Journo piece today makes me wonder if Ballmer has his own Microsoft intranet, on which he can only visit the websites MicrosoftIsReallyFuckingGreat.com and MicrosoftNewsStevieWantsToHearGodammit.net:

In every category Apple competes, it’s the low-volume player, except in tablets.

In every category apart from tablets? So presumably smartphones are tablets? And music players are tablets? Still, Microsoft might have become the high-volume player in screaming bullshit, if Ballmer keeps this up.

Hat tip: The Loop.

John C. Dvorak, for ITProPortal.com:

Just imagine the scene if Apple had projected “$179” onto the screen during its announcement (and priced the UK model at £149). Apple stock would have rocketed

Yup. Right until the next financial quarterly results came in, showcasing how Apple’s profits had plummeted, at which point the stock would have followed suit.

Perhaps Apple has misjudged the market. Maybe the iPad mini won’t sell that well. If that’s the case, there’s nothing to stop Apple adjusting its price-point later. But people have in the past argued against Apple’s pricing decisions regarding mobile products, and yet all the devices have flown off the shelves. It’d be a brave or stupid tech hack that would bet utterly against that happening this time round.

UPDATE: Looks like I was wrong on this. New new iPad is out today.

Over on App.net, Marco Arment has been wondering about today’s iPad announcement from Apple. One thing he asked:

If the iPad 3 gets updated tomorrow, presumably Apple’s done with the spring iPad updates and will release in the fall from now on, fixing the just-got-one-for-the-holidays frustration with the current iPad release cycle.

Logically, that thinking makes sense, but you also have to bear in mind what currently happens with iPad cycles. First, Apple has a two-spike strategy. In spring, the iPad is updated, causing a major sales spike. Apple then gets ‘holiday’ spikes for free in the winter, regardless. By moving new iPads to the autumn, Apple loses its spring spike.

Secondly, Apple always has massive problems in fulfilling demand. New iPads are often thin on the ground for months after release, and the international rollout is rarely immediate. It’s one thing being frustrated in not getting your new iPad in April or May, but November and December? Apple might lose a little goodwill in people buying iPads for the holidays and then announcing a new one in late-spring, but it’ll lose a hell of a lot more goodwill if it releases new iPads in November and can’t fulfil demand for the holidays.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see a minor new iPad bump today, but I’d be surprised if that signalled a change in Apple’s overall scheduling strategy.